Dish complains to FCC about Comcast/Time Warner, DirecTV/AT&T

Dish has come out in opposition to the proposed Comcast/Time Warner merger. Speaking to the FCC, the satellite provider says the deal presents “serious competitive concerns” for the industry. They also don’t see how any damage would be mitigated or reversed.

Dish’s concerns run the gamut, and they’ve made their case on every one of them to the FCC. The company thinks a Comcast/Time Warner deal will make it harder for them to negotiate deals with content suppliers, as the move would make the new entity dominant in several key markets. Dish says “a combined Comcast-TWC will be able to exercise its enormous size to leverage programming content in anti-competitive ways”.

Dish CEO Charlie Ergen said “there do not appear to be any conditions that would remedy the harms that would result from the merger”, suggesting Dish has no idea how they’d overcome any damage done by the merger. To that end, Dish says the newly formed company would have three ‘choke points’ to leverage: “the last mile ‘public Internet’ channel to the consumer; the interconnection point; and any managed or specialized service channels”.

Comcast and Time Warner aren’t the only concerns dish has, though. They also feel the DirecTV/AT&T deal presents “competitive concerns”. It should be noted that Dish was flirting with a merger with DirecTV until they went with AT&T.